This book is wild. I greatly recommend reading it if you’re on the spectrum. A large part of my social life is occupied with finding plausible reasons underpinning peoples’ behavior and this book is a rich source of them. My sole critique is that the book hits extremely hard the first few chapters and then the rest of the book is just ceaseless meandering through practices of various historical & contemporary cultures, but yeah - really that means you only need to read the first few chapters to get 90% of the benefit of the book.
I feel like a lot of the scenarios in this book could be put on some kind of final exam for autistic social interaction. Here’s a sample: if you save somebody’s life, they do not owe you a debt to be repaid as you might first assume; instead, you are responsible for them for the rest of their life. Why is this?
Seconding comrade Grabers big door stop
I’m going to look for this right now. Thank you
Here’s a sample: if you save somebody’s life, they do not owe you a debt to be repaid as you might first assume; instead, you are responsible for them for the rest of their life.
I don’t understand what this is supposed to mean. In what real situation would someone be responsible for them for the rest of their life?
But also, they wouldn’t owe you a debt “to be repaid”. It would be nice for them to show some sort of appreciation, and they likely will, but it’s not transactional. They don’t owe you a live-saving or something of equivalent value just because you saved theirs. Their “debt” if anything is to do the same for someone else if they happen to be in that position, but we’re all already supposed to do that anyway.
That’s from the book, which is using examples of other civilizations and cultures to show that our current understanding of debt and ownership is unique to our culture, not universal. It doesn’t “make sense” to us because we are cultured to believe differently.
I do think there’s some truth to it in our society too. Imagine I am walking along a bridge and come across somebody who is about to jump; I manage to talk them down. Do you think that is the end of my interaction with that person? I think I am in some sense responsible for them now. I convinced them life was worth living. If they ask me for something I must give great consideration to it, or else I undermine the premises of my original act of saving their life.
Honestly, a lot of leftism is looking at bullshit things taken for granted in capitalist society and realizing that it’s stupid and shouldn’t be a thing.
